Читать книгу The WWII Collection - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 12

That afternoon, I go visit with Birdy again. I’m beginning to think there’s not much use. The trouble is I’m not sure I really want Birdy to come back. It’s such a rat-shit world and the more I see, the worse it looks. Birdy probably knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t have to worry about anything, somebody’s always going to take care of him, feed him. He can live his whole life out pretending he’s a lousy canary. What’s so terrible about that?

Christ, I’m wishing I could get onto something loony myself. Maybe I’ll play gorilla like that guy across the hall; just shit in my hands every once in a while and throw it at somebody. They’d lock me up and I’d be taken care of the way I was in the hospital at Metz. I could do it. Maybe that means I’m crazy. I just know it’s not so bad letting somebody else make the decisions.

God, it’d be great to be a running guard again; feel the mud sticking in my cleats, smell the mold in the shoulder pads around my ears, hear my own breathing inside a helmet. Everything simple, just knock down anybody with the wrong color shirt.

Who the hell knows who’s really crazy? I think this Weiss is crazy along with his spitting T-4. They know Birdy’s crazy and probably think I am too. I should talk to that CO. He’s been around looneys long enough, probably knows more than most doctors. One thing I’ve learned; you want to know where an OP is, never ask an officer. He’s liable to send you to a Post Office.

I’m even beginning to wonder if the way Birdy and I were so close all those years wasn’t a bit suspicious. Nobody else I’ve ever known had such a close friend; it was as if we were married or something. We had a private club for two. From the time I was thirteen until I was seventeen I spent more time with Birdy than with everybody else put together. Sure, I chased girls and Birdy played with birds but he was actually the only person I was ever close to. People used to say we sounded alike, our voices I mean; we were always coming out with the same sentences at the same time too. I’m missing Birdy; I needed him back to talk to.

I sit there for over an hour between the doors not saying anything. I’m not particularly watching Birdy either. It’s like a long guard duty, I’m turned inside myself, only half there. I don’t know how I get to thinking about the dogcatching; maybe I’m remembering how it was all such a shock to us, especially hanging around the squad room talking to the cops. That was a quick injection of life-shit all right.

– Hey, Birdy!

He tenses up; he’s listening to me. What the hell. I don’t feel like talking to him about it. What good would it do. It’s not what I want to talk about anyway. Birdy hops up and turns around to look at me. He cocks his head both ways looking out of one eye, then the other, like a pigeon.

– Aw, come off it, Birdy; quit this bird shit!

It was the summer before our junior year when Birdy and I got the job as dogcatchers. Actually, we invented the job. There’d never been any dogcatchers in Upper Merion and so there were whole packs of dogs running around wild. This was especially true in the poor part of town, our neighborhood.

These packs would have ten or twenty dogs in them and they didn’t belong to anybody. People’d buy their kids a puppy for Christmas or a birthday and then when they found out how much they ate, they’d throw them out and the dogs would find each other. It was like a jungle. Mostly they were mangy-looking mongrels, with short legs and long tails or pointed faces and thick fur; all kinds of strange-looking animals.

They’d roam around in the early morning knocking over garbage cans and spreading crap around. Daytimes, they’d usually avoid people and mosey around independently or sleep. Sometimes they’d even go back to the people who owned them; but at night they were regular wolf packs.

Once in a while they’d gang up on a kid or some cat or the garbage men and there’d be a big fuss in the newspapers. This happened just as we were about ready to get out of school that summer. I got the idea of trying to pick them off with my twenty-two. By then, I’m already a real gun nut. I don’t know if I would’ve ever done it but I told Birdy. He said we should go to the police and tell them we’ll work over the summer as dogcatchers. He already has all those canaries and big feed bills.

Surprisingly, the police buy the idea; the commissioner signs procurement slips and in only two weeks it’s all set up. They rip the back off one of the old patrol wagons, build a big cage on it, rig a wooden platform on the back bumper where we can stand with handles to hold on to.

They assign a sergeant named Joe Sagessa to drive the wagon and we’re in business. Joe Sagessa had been on the desk and isn’t too happy with the job but he’s stuck. He has a pack of hunting dogs out in Secane so he’s the likely one for the detail.

The deal is we’d be paid a dollar an hour plus a dollar a dog. That was a lot of money in those days. My old man was only pulling about thirty-five bucks a week as a plumber.

While the truck is being fixed up they send us down to Philadelphia for training. We’re just on the straight dollar an hour but we don’t have to do a damned thing but watch.

The township bought us gigantic nets especially made for catching dogs. They have short handles, only a foot or so long but the net part is almost four feet in diameter. They weigh over thirty pounds. There are racks built on the side of the wagon to hang the nets when we ride on the back.

Down in Philadelphia the dogcatchers are all black. They’re genuine professionals and one of them has been catching dogs for seven years. These guys catch dogs the way the Globetrotters play basketball. They made a real joy out of it.

They have a regular dog wagon, designed for the job; they can clamber around the fender and get inside behind the driver whenever they want. Only one of them at a time would ride on the outside. He sings out whenever he sights a stray dog.

They give us lessons with the nets first. They’d worked out left-hand hook shots, right hooks and straight-on jump shots. This last, they say, is for when the dog jumps at your throat. They’re having fun kidding around with us.

It’s all worked out like big game hunting. They talk about different dogs they’d gotten and about the big ‘mothers’ they’d had to wrestle into the truck, and they show us all the places where they’ve been bitten. They get a straight dollar and a half an hour no matter how many dogs they catch.

For a week we ride along on the back of the trucks with them. Now, down in Philadelphia, most of the houses are row houses, so they have a system for trapping dogs between the rows. When they spot a dog, one netman jumps off right there and the wagon goes down the street toward the dog. They drop another netman off beside the dog, and the truck goes on down to the other end of the street and swings around. The third guy, the one driving the wagon, gets out there. They all have their nets with them.

The one in the middle, beside the dog, sneaks up and tries a drop shot; just drops the net over the dog. This is rarely successful. Somehow, the dogs catch on and take off. Then it’s up to the netman at either end. The one in the middle hotfoots it after the dog to keep him moving. As the dog charges past the guy on the end, he’ll try to net him with a right or left hook shot. If the dog doubles back, he has to run past two nets. It’s a lot like a good baseball play where they catch a player off third base and run him down. Finally, the dog takes the plunge one way or the other and most times winds up under the net.

Then there’d be a lot of laughing and pushing the dog into the wagon. People’d start crowding around and cursing and if it were somebody’s dog, there’d be big arguments. They have a way of lifting the dog up in the net and dumping him into the cage. They told us one time a character came out and cut the net to get his dog. They laughed till they couldn’t breathe telling us about it. As soon as they’ve locked a dog in the wagon, they’d hightail on out of the neighborhood.

There’d been dogcatchers a long time in Philadelphia so there aren’t really any packs. What they need down there is a catcatcher. There’re beat up cats wandering all over the streets. You just never see a bird in that part of town.

These dogcatchers have girlfriends all over. After they’ve gotten seven or eight dogs they take off one at a time for an hour or two to go visit the girls. The rest of us would drive around. Sometimes if a dog looks as if he wants to be picked up, we drop off and try to slip a net over him. Most of the girlfriends are married and these guys would come back laughing and giggling and bragging but scared, too. There are all kinds of jokes about who’s the most tired. They’re actually catching dogs about three hours a day. The rest of the time they are, without doubt, the oldest established floating stud service in Philadelphia.

They’d ride around flirting. Women are hanging out the windows, leaning on pillows and waiting for them. They’d yell and try to get us to stop. The guys have on-going arguments about who has how many kids with which women. Most of the talking isn’t really words, more just smiles, looks, and deep throat noises. It sure looks like a hell of a lot better life than our fathers have.

At the end of the day, we’d go back to the dog pound. They have cages there and a setup for gassing unclaimed dogs. This means just about all the dogs they caught. Nobody is about to pay two dollars for a license and a five dollar fine to get out a dog.

They’d empty the wagon, then gather the overdue dogs into the gas chamber, close the door, a door like a safe with a twisting handle, turn on the gas, then go over and clean out the cages where the dogs had been.

Birdy and I are fascinated by the gassing. After half an hour, they turn on the fans to suck out the gas, open the doors and pull the dead dogs out by the tails. Neither of us has had much to do with anything dead. It’s hard to watch them go in live, jumping, barking, trying to get attention, then come out dead with their eyes open. There’s a special incinerator designed to burn the dogs. It has a long, movable grate they can pull in and out for dumping the dogs into the flames. They clean out the gassing chamber and the day is finished. They laugh and joke while they do all this but we can tell they don’t like it either.

That first morning when we got out alone, with our own wagon, we chase about fifty dogs and don’t catch one. The houses where we’re hunting aren’t row houses and the dogs run off between houses and into the next street. Joe Sagessa almost laughs himself sick watching us. We could probably have walked up to most of those dogs and picked them up. We both feel this would be cheating. We have to catch our dogs with the net to be dogcatchers.

That afternoon we go back to our own neighborhood because the houses there are in rows. We manage to catch four dogs, including the dog of Mr Kohler, the paperhanger; he lives three houses away from us.

The township had made arrangements to keep the dogs for forty-eight hours in the kennels of a vet named Doc Owens. We take the dogs out there and then quit for the day.

When I get home, Mr Kohler is in our living room. He’s hollering at my mother. When I come in, he turns on me. He wants to know where his dog is. He says if it’s dead, he’s going to kill me. He calls me an Italian Fascist. I push him out the door, across the porch, and down the steps. I’m hoping he’ll take a swing at me. I haven’t knocked down a grown man yet. He stands on the lawn and tells me he’s going to call the police. I tell him I’m working for the police. I tell him it’ll cost five dollars to get his dog back because it didn’t have a license, the dog is a criminal and so is he. If he doesn’t get down there right away tomorrow I’ll slit the damned dog’s throat myself. He calls me a Fascist again. I call him a shithead kike. I’m about ready to start chasing him down the street; I’m wishing I had my net. My mother tells me to come inside. I go in and she tells me to quit the dogcatcher job. I tell her I won’t; I’m just beginning to enjoy it.

The next day we get twelve dogs. We’ve worked out our own system. We catch the dogs cowboy style, by more or less rounding them up. When we come on a pack we don’t drive up to them, we follow and maneuver them from street to street, till we get them at a dead end or a place where we can surround them.

We’re watching to find out who the leader of the pack is. All those packs have one top dog. We watch for this when we’re rounding up the pack. He’s easy to spot because he runs at the head of the pack and the others look at him to see what to do. We concentrate on catching that pack leader, then the rest are easy. The way we do this is drop one of us, usually me, right in front of this dog. I stand there with the net down like a bullfighter’s cloak and growl at him. Usually he has to defend his honor and the pack so he’ll bristle up and growl back. Birdy, meanwhile, has dropped off behind him, perhaps twenty, thirty yards, and sneaks up through the back. By the time the dog’s discovered what’s happened it’s too late, and one or the other of us takes him. After that, the rest of the pack is easy. They stand still as we walk up to them or wag their tails trying to make friends. Most dogs are big cowards. We net them or pick them up. We figure we deserve the pack after catching the leader.

We catch this whole twelve dogs between eleven and eleven-thirty in the morning of that second day. Twelve dogs is all the wagon will carry. It’s half an hour drive out to Doc Owens’s, so Joe Sagessa suggests we get some hoagies and beer, then sack out up behind the golf course. We do that and lie around telling jokes till about three, then drive over to Doc Owens’s with the dogs. Mr Kohler has already come and paid to get his mutt.

That night, the cage is a filthy mess. Luckily there’s a hose for cleaning off the squad cars, so we use it to wash out all the dog shit, dog piss, vomit and dog hair. Joe gets us lockers in the squad room where we can keep our work clothes. We shower in the squad showers and keep an extra set of clothes there.

It’s almost like we’re in the police ourselves. It’s terrific being able to handle those slick thirty-eights and forty-fives. Those cops keep them in perfect shape. Some of the belts and harnesses are beautiful to look at, with the ideal combination of sweat and oil, molded to fit the waist or the shoulder.

There’re always card games going on. Joe introduces us around and they don’t seem to mind our being there. I begin to think I wouldn’t mind being a cop. A guy like Joe Sagessa is still young and ready to retire with a good pension. People might hate you but they holler when they need you and you get a lot of respect. There’s another idea I can write off.

The next day we do the same thing. By ten o’clock in the morning, we have ten dogs including a huge German shepherd. This time we drive them out to Doc Owens’s first, come back to get our hoagies and beer, then lie around for two hours. That way we don’t have the dogs locked up all the time, barking, howling and crapping all over everything. In the afternoon we go out for a second load. We get eight more dogs. Joe’s having as much fun catching dogs as we are. He’s on regular salary, but that day Birdy and I split eighteen dollars in dog money plus the eight hours in salary. What a racket.

Doc Owens is beginning to back out on the deal. He’s running out of places to put the dogs. His fancy clientele is up tight about having so many mangy mongrels hanging around. That first set of dogs is over the forty-eight hour mark, too, and nobody’s come to claim any of them except for Mr Kohler. Doc Owens makes us take them with us. Joe says he’ll drop them off out where he lives. That’s about twenty miles out Baltimore Pike and outside the township.

The next day we get eleven dogs in the morning. When we arrive at Doc Owens’s he won’t let us unload. Joe is smiling like crazy. They’ve got mutts tied to stakes all over the back yard. It looks like a very low-class dog show. Doc Owens wants us to take those twelve dogs we got the second day before we unload any more. So, we go back to the police station in the municipal building and Joe explains the situation to Captain Lutz. Lutz phones down to Philadelphia and they agree to gas the dogs, but at a dollar a dog. There’s nothing else to do, so we drive all the way into town, deliver the dogs, feeling like real bastards, and drive back. By then, it’s too late to go out again so we wash and clean out the wagon. Birdy and I spend that night trying to think of another job.

The next morning, we catch ten dogs in less than half an hour. The catching is getting to be the easy part. We go out to Doc Owens and he comes over with a worried look on his face. He blows up when he looks into the wagon and sees this really motley bunch of dogs, including a mean-looking Spitz. Joe jumps out of the car with two wires in his hand and a smile on his face.

Joe’s system is simple but awful. He says it’s the best way and the dog doesn’t suffer at all. He electrocutes the dogs. The way he does it is to stand the dog in a wet spot on the cement floor in Doc Owens’s cellar. Then he shaves a spot of hair off the back of the dog’s neck and another spot just above the tail joint. He snaps alligator clips on to these spots. The alligator clips are attached to wires which join in an outlet plug.

He hooks up one of the dogs this way, stands back, and pushes the plug into a 220-volt socket. The dog sort of jumps into the air, with its legs stiff and its eyes wide open, staring; then comes down on its feet, standing like a toy dog, its hair sticking out straight. After about a minute, Joe pulls the plug and the dog collapses into a heap.

It’s a terrible thing to look at but can’t be any worse than being gassed. The trouble is you have it happening in front of your eyes. I’ve seen some cats smashed by cars but that wasn’t on purpose. This is awful.

We’d reach in, choose one of the dogs, hook it up, the dog having no idea of what’s happening, and then ZAP, the end. Birdy and I hose the floor after each dog. We’re hearing rumors about the Nazis’ concentration camps; we’re running a concentration camp for dogs.

We do all twelve dogs. After the first few, I’ve made up my mind to quit. Maybe somebody has to do it but I don’t want to be the one. Birdy is pale green in that dark cellar and we’re watching each other. I know we’re both torn between taking off and bursting out laughing or crying. I know Doc Owens and Joe are watching us.

Doc Owens asks Joe what we’re going to do with the dead dogs. Joe says he’s made arrangements for that, too. Birdy and I carry the dead dogs out and put them in the back of the wagon. They seem one hell of a lot heavier dead than alive. We drag the heavy, bigger dogs out by the tails, then lift them together and push them through the door. It’s amazing the difference between dead things and live things.

We jump on the back of the wagon and Joe drives us over to the next township. Birdy and I stand so we block the wire screen door. We don’t want anyone looking in and seeing all those dead dogs when we’re stopped at a red light.

We drive to the big incinerator in Haverford Township. It’s one of those tall tower jobs that burns all the time. The smoke and smell are supposed to go straight up so nobody will smell it. We get the dogs out, two apiece, throw them over our shoulders and climb to the top on winding steps. The dogs are already getting cold and stiff. Up there is a manhole cover. Joe opens it and we can look straight down into the flames. We drop the dogs down that hole. It’s enough to turn a person religious.

By the time we come up with the second set of dogs, it’s already smelly. We drop them in, put the cover back and Joe says, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ It’s about one-thirty in the afternoon now, so we get our hoagies and beer, and drive up behind the golf course again.

Birdy starts off by telling Joe he’s not sure he can stick it out. The killing of the dogs is too much. Joe begins telling us stories about the things he’s seen as a policeman. He says we should quit if we really feel like it but we might as well get our feet wet here as anywhere else. We’re probably going to be cannon fodder for the war and we’d better get used to it now. He says this seeing dogs die and learning to live with it might actually save our lives later on. In twenty years on the force he’s seen all kinds of shit and life is no bag of cherries.

Joe is medium height and thick, not fat, and he looks strong. He has a full head of graying hair cut short. He looks so much like a man that even the other policemen look like boys beside him. He has a deep voice and a deep laugh; he laughs a lot. We listen to his stories about all the rot going on in just our township and we know he isn’t lying. It’s the first time Birdy and I really begin to learn something of what a mean shitty world it is. What makes it all worse is Joe laughing at some of his worst stories and expecting us to laugh with him. We don’t have the guts to quit either. I think we can’t face up to having Joe laugh at us.

Well, it turns out that all the smell from the incinerator doesn’t go up. A regular war starts between Upper Merion Township and Haverford Township. Joe is called before the commissioner and bawled out. The commissioner’s getting mixed reviews about the whole dogcatching operation anyway. Gardeners, mothers of small children are sending nice letters, but dog lovers are up in arms. They’re threatening to get the ASPCA after us. It looks like Birdy and I won’t have to quit after all. The dogcatching operation is suspended for three days. Birdy’s glad because he has a lot of work to do with his birds. He’s catching dogs so he can build that dream aviary of his; the same reason he was digging for buried treasure in the rain.

I go over to his place and help him out some. He has more crazy canaries than you’d believe. Birdy gets all excited showing me some of the experiments he’s carrying out with weights on the birds’ legs and pulling flight feathers from the wings to see how little a bird needs to carry a heavy weight. He’s also built some beautiful models. He wants me to help when he turns one of these into a working model big enough for him to fly. He wants me to help with the launching. I say I’ll do it when we get some time off from dogcatching. I’ve got an idea for an underwater diving bell myself and I’m going to need help when I try it out. We agree to do both those things when the dogcatching thing folds.

The next Monday we’re back on the wagon again. Joe tells us he’s found another place to get rid of the dogs. Birdy wants us to take the afternoons off and ride out to the Main Line where all the millionaires live and dump the dogs there. If we could do it, that’d be fun. We’d start all kinds of new breeds mixed in with French poodles and Pekineses.

We catch a truckful by noon. The dogs are getting smarter; survival of the fittest is beginning to set in. We go out to Doc Owens’s. He’s ready to go through the roof after keeping all those dogs five days. He rants and raves at Joe. Joe smiles, shakes his head, and promises we’d take them all today. Joe’s enjoying Doc Owens’s being mad.

For all the noise the dog lovers are making, there’s nothing being done about it. Just about all those dogs we caught are still there, ready to be killed. To tell the truth, most people are glad to get rid of their mutts.

That afternoon at Doc Owens’s is like a combination of Sing Sing and a slaughterhouse. We’re piling up dead dogs three high. The smell of burning flesh and hair is sickening. The poor dogs begin to catch on to what’s happening and start trying to fight away from the alligator clips. One beast, half setter, part shepherd, part wolf, gets so mean we can’t get the clips on him and Doc Owens gives him a shot of strychnine. He goes out about the same as the ones with the electricity.

Some dogs, though, still walk right up, smile at us and wag their tails, looking up at us expectantly, as if we’re going to put them on a leash and take them for a walk. Some walk; a walk right into nowhere. Birdy and I have to keep going outside for breaths of air and to hold ourselves together.

When it’s done, we carry all the dogs into the truck. We pack them in tight and even throw a few onto the floor in front beside Joe. It’s three-thirty before we get them all in. Joe starts driving out into the country past Secane. Joe doesn’t tell anybody anything until he’s ready, so we don’t ask questions. I’m thinking he’s found another incinerator, or is going to pile them up in a dump.

Slowly, as we get further out from any houses, we begin to pick up the most horrendous smell I’ve ever smelled. Nothing can describe it. We go onto a small dirt road and pull up into an open place in front of a stable. There are spavined-looking horses tied around to the buildings. The whole place is swarming with big blue flies. Usually there are flies around horses, but not like this, and this smell is something else. It doesn’t smell like horses.

But it’s horses all right. It’s horses being cut up. This is a slaughteryard for old plugs. I look over at Birdy and he’s absolutely green. Joe jumps out of the truck and seems to know everybody. Joe knows everybody, everywhere. I guess that’s part of being a cop; probably, too, he buys meat for his dogs out here.

We get off the wagon and are immediately covered by flies. It’s a hot day and they’re drinking our sweat, then they start on our blood. They’re big flies with shiny blue-purple bodies and dark red heads. There’s no way to get away from the bastards; they fly into our noses, eyes, ears. Joe comes back and tells us to get up in the wagon again. He drives us around in back of long sheds. Inside we can see men standing in blood, hacking away at huge chunks of horse flesh.

Behind the shed, there’s something that looks like a gigantic meat-grinding machine; it’s run by a gasoline motor. Joe jumps out, walks over and pulls a cord, the way you’d start a motorboat or a lawn mower, and it starts chugging, slow then fast, a one lunger. Blue smoke comes out in clouds. Joe switches it into gear and the grinder begins making a tremendous racket. Bits of ground flesh leak from small holes in the bottom.

There’s a huge funnel-like hole at the top of the grinder, almost big enough to put a human body into it. Joe tells us to get the dogs out of the wagon. We drag them over and he starts dropping them into the funnel. Jesus, he’s still smiling! He’s holding the dogs away from himself, to keep the blood, shit, and slobber from getting on him, and dropping them in. He’s in his uniform shirt with his badge and regulation pants. His belt and pistol are around his waist and he’s not wearing his cap. He glistens in the sunlight, dropping the dogs into the machine. Thin lines of dog flesh, mixed in with hair, are coming out the bottom. Birdy and I are staggering back and forth with the dogs, trying to pretend we’re men and trying not to vomit all over the place. The stink, the flies, and now grinding up the dogs; we’re earning our dollar an hour. Joe motions us to help him put the dogs in; he steps back and rubs his hands together.

We grab hold of the dogs. The best way is to lower them in by the tail. The sound of the grinding is grisly. We get it done somehow. Birdy and I are glad to climb into the front seat of the wagon while Joe talks with some of the men standing around. We’re never going to make it as men in this world. The seats are plastic and hot. Birdy says if we can get used to this we can get used to anything. That’s after I tell him we’ll get used to it.

We’re just about getting our stomachs settled when Joe comes over and invites us into the shed to watch how it’s all done. He sees our faces and starts laughing. He slides into the wagon; we climb out onto the back, and take off.

While we’re cleaning the wagon that afternoon, I ask Joe what they do with all the meat they grind up in the grinder. Joe says they make dog food with it.